The story of this concept car is quite unique. In 1994 Chrysler’s president Bob Lutz, and chief designer Tom Gale were invited as judges for that year’s Pebble Beach Concours D’elegance, the most presitigious event of it’s type in the entire world. Lutz and Gale noticed that some of the cars they were judging were actually very close stylistically to some of the concept cars doing the rounds at the time, so right there in Pebble Beach’s grass, they decided that for the following year they’d unveil a concept car so striking that it’d send all other concepts back to their trailers with the tail ‘tween their tires.Legend has it that Lutz made a quick-ass sketch in a napkin and gave it to Gale. The result was the Chrysler Atlantic of 1995, designed by Bob Hubbach, who based his vision in some of the most striking and beautiful automobiles to ever grace the roads, like the Bugatti 57 Atlantic, the Talbot Lago “Teardrop”, and works by Delage and Delahaye. And their heritage can be clearly seen troughout the lines of the car. It even has a straight-8 engine just like those french wonders, only this one was formed by blending to Dodge Neon engines together.After knowing of this car’s story, it became one of my favorites concept cars ever, and I just had to customize one of the Matchbox castings of this thing.

For the wheels I used what was the latest Hot Wheels release, and their size was perfect to fill those enormous wheelwells, and made a good representation of the huge-for-the-time 21″ and 22″ wheels the real car used.